Notice how the older one becomes, the more connected one feels to history? I don't believe anyone who says they're not interested in history -- that is, everything that's come before the ever-shifting present moment -- unless he or she lives only in a disembodied spirit. The present always has a deepening context, and that context is history.
I remember seeing the city of Dresden in East Germany with my own eyes in 1981 during the Cold War, the remaining ruins from the 1945 firebombings and the rebuilt parts, as well. The living people and the ruins of a church. If the 1937 bombing of Guernica was a harbinger (already transpiring in the Asia-Pacific War), Dresden provided more testimony to human cruelty and madness.
But beyond Picasso's Guernica of 1937, why not check out Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death (1969)? Or Errol Morris' mesmerizing documenary The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (2003), scored by Philip Glass? Or from yet another viewpoint, via the perspective of an Inuit guy who finds himself over Dresden 65 years ago: Vincent Ward's Map of the Human Heart (1993)? What I love about all of these artistic achievements is how they draw so many things together with such clarity.
This trailer for Map of the Human Heart makes the movie seem like Disney meets Hallmark, but the film is anything but. The Dresden scenes are indelibly wrought.
Today's Rune: Gateway. The older I become, the closer I feel to the big events of the past. How about you?
5 comments:
Erik, My dad used to say "she was made up like a Dresden doll"! WTF! I DO identify with the quote! Happy Valentines Day Erik!
It has been a long held belief of mine that foresight is corrected only by hindsight.
Hey y'all, thanks for the comments! Made up like a Dresden doll -- nifty fifty ;-> \
Mark, things in rearview mirror seem larger/or smaller than they appear . . . sounds about right.
Vonnegut actually lived through the Dresden raid. He and the other POW's were safe, as in the book, in an underground meat locker while over 100,000 German civilians were incinerated. The absurdity and irony of it goes a long way to explaining his generally dreary view of humanity.
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